Getting Started with Google Adwords

If you have been reading about internet marketing and making money on online, chances are that you have heard about Google Adwords. If you haven’t, I’ll sum it very quickly for you. Google Adwords are the sponsored ads you see all over the internet, whether it be on a website as an ad displayed alongside content, or the sponsored ads that you see above, beside, and below the search results, also known as the organic listings, when you search for something on Google.

Becoming proficient with Google Adwords can open a huge door of opportunity for you while you build your internet empire. It provides a way to get your site or products in front of people, on the first page of search results, while you wait on your website to slowly climb the ranks of the results pages via search engine optimization (SEO). Experts in the field of pay per click (PPC) marketing can spend years learning the ins and outs of Adwords, but as you get started with it, there are several things that you should know immediately. So in my 8 years of being a PPC analyst and after creating and managing almost $6 million dollars in Adwords spend, below are some of my tips for any beginner in PPC.

Be Specific

Adwords will work infinitely better for you if your ads and keywords are all highly targeted and specific to what you are trying to advertise. It may seem like a no-brainer, but let me explain this. Of course if you are selling mens shoes, you are not going to write an ad for ladies jackets. But you need to more focused than mens shoes, in other words, what kind of mens shoes are you advertising? Dress Shoes? Basketball Shoes? Your ad and keywords should describe a very specific offering like “Mens Black Dress Shoes” or “Mens Leather Dress Shoes”. When I teach Adwords to individuals, I will often give them the example of “Attorney” vs “Lawyer”. Do they describe the same thing, yes, but you can create ads and supporting keyword lists that reflect “Attorney” and “Lawyer” individually. This will give you ad groups that are laser focused on a very tight group of keywords. The little extra time spent doing this means in the long run you will pay less per click and your your conversion costs will also be lower. This also means better margins and profits for you.

Pay Attention to Your Geo Targets

Shotgunning your campaign to the whole world as a part of your master plan may sound great, but in the end it is going to cost you a lot. Adwords is an extremely powerful advertising platform that allows you to focus on a wide variety of geographical targets: cities, zip codes, states, etc. You can even choose areas that you do not want your ads to shown in. Maybe you want to concentrate your ads in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area, but not the city core. Maybe a company is close to a state line and they don’t provide their service in the neighboring state, easy, exclude that state from your targeting and keep your ads from showing there. Tons of flexibility here, use it.

Device Targets

Google is available on almost any platform you can think of, desktop computers, tablets, smartphones and more. You can choose what specific devices you want your ads to show on. Maybe your landing pages are optimized for desktops and laptops. Maybe you are writing ads for something people commonly search for on their mobile phones. Even better, maybe you are launching a pay per call campaign, wouldn’t targeting smartphones be a better strategy? Pay attention to how your campaign is performing on the device level and adjust according to your campaign’s needs.

Trust the Data

The driver behind Adwords is data. You are not just buying clicks through to your website, you are buying data and sometimes data is just as valuable as a sale. It helps you decide when is the best time of day, or best day of the week to advertise. It helps you understand the cost and conversion rate of ad positions, which keywords cost less, what areas not to target, and more. Get into the habit of not making BIG changes all of the time, but rather smaller changes over a longer period time so that you can properly evaluate how those changes effect performance. Above all, be patient and trust the data to help guide you.

So those are some of my top tips for getting started with Google Adwords. For the most part I will stay away from the very basics of Adwords as Google has a great video series on YouTube. What I will be discussing on GNM are the tips and tricks that help make Adwords work better for you. Have any big tips for beginners? Leave a comment here on our Facebook page and as always, stop thinking about it and do it!

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Who is Mike Rioux?

Having been in internet marketing since 2006, I became a paid professional PPC manager at a large web services company in 2012. In 2014 I realized I wanted the freedom of a true IM lifestyle and GNM was born. Follow along, learn some things, and don't forget to Like Us on Facebook.